To respond adaptively in novel settings, intelligent agents must develop certain invariances (or abstractions) to map the infinite variety of the natural world to some smaller number of concepts, features, or values. Dr. Jessica Thompson investigates the computational principles that govern how those abstract representations develop through experience. As a postdoctoral researcher in Chris Summerfield’s group at University of Oxford, she uses careful experimental design to establish the functional role of various computational ingredients in artificial neural networks trained on visual reasoning tasks. She completed her PhD at the International Laboratory for Brain, Music & Sound Research (BRAMS) and the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute (Mila) at University of Montreal where her research focused on characterizing and comparing representational hierarchies in artificial neural networks and the human auditory system.
News:
- I will present my postdoctoral research at COSYNE 2024 in Lisbon.
- December 2023: I have begun an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship which allows me to continue my resarch in Oxford.
- December 2023: I am now also a Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford.
- December 2023: Chris and my BBS commentary “Thinking beyond the ventral stream” is published
- October 2023: I presented my postdoctoral research at the Advances in NeuroAI workshop in Montreal, Canada
- Augsut 2023: I participated in a GAC and presented a poster at CCN 2023 in Oxford, UK
Example recorded lectures:
- Comparing the activity of artificial and biological neural networks at the Montreal Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience Symposium (MAIN2020)
- Introduction to Scientific Explanation of Cognition at the Symposium on Explanation in Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence
